Work experience Guide

If you fancy a career change, are returning to work after a break, or looking for your first job; lacking work experience can be a huge hurdle. You can gain valuable, insightful experience and develop skills through work experience; that may make you more attractive to employers and can help open doors for potential career prospects.

Who can take part in Work Experience?

It's a common misconception that work experience is only for students/ young people. Anyone at any stage can benefit from work experience. It's also a useful tool to use when exploring employment opportunities and aiding you to make informed choices about your future.

Types of Work Experience:

Informal work experience can be organised through relatives or acquaintances. For example, a pupil could organise their own experience over a summer holiday period or help at a friend’s shop.

Formal schemes are aimed at a group of people whether that is year 10 pupils, college students, or unemployed adults. This just means it's organised through schools, colleges, universities, or employers.

Benefits of Work Experience

It’s a fantastic opportunity to see if a career change is right for you. Although work experience tends to be unpaid the benefits are clear.

• Allows you to explore the kind of work you'd like to go into before applying for a new job, vocational course, college, and university.
• Work experience is for anyone, of any age. If you fancy a career change or want to get back into work, then it’s an amazing way to kickstart your career.
• Work experience allows you to learn new skills or build on existing ones, this can help boost confidence!
• Work experience enables people to show employers what you are capable of, they might even consider them when a job becomes available.
• Work experience can give you a reference for your next job.

Use Work Experience to better yourself

By participating in work experience not only do you gain employability skills that are attractive to employers, but you also find out more about your future career preferences. It can help you to identify your strength, weakness, and interests. Being able to highlight these factors allows you to challenge yourself in areas you feel you need improvement in which can help you to be the best version of yourself.

Ways to get Work Experience:

• Volunteering.
• Part-time jobs.
• Helping friends or family with a business.
• Through your school, college, or university.
• Virtual work experience through an employer.
• Traineeships/ Internships.
• Apprenticeships.
• You might want to write a letter to a company you would like to work for.

Work experience can benefit anyone at any stage of their life and career. If you want to build your existing skills or develop a new one, work experience might be for you! Get in touch with an Inspira adviser below, for FREE 1:1 expert career advice to help you explore your options today.